If there’s one thing I loved about celebrating Eid in Michigan with my uncles (and recently my in-laws), it was the open houses on Eid. The Canton community is much smaller and thus closely knit than our Chicagoland masajid, so the people “house hop” around after Eid salah until they eventually settle back at their own homes. While this was great for fostering a community, it also gave house hoppers the chance to sample a huge variety of “finger foods” throughout the day. A piece of lasagna and a puff pastry samosa/patty at one aunty’s house, a bit or biryani at another, a slice of cake at a friend’s etc.

In Chicagoland, at least where I grew up in IFS area, that doesn’t happen as systematically as in Canton. So with my wife being from Canton and this being her first Eid in Chicago, she decided to have open house at our place. It was nice to have friends come over, and in open house tradition, we had ourselves a wide variety of food.

First, we highlight the biryani that my mom made. Read the rest

Gmail gets awesomer. Dunno if you read the Gmail blog which feeds updates to the bottom left corner of the main login screen or not, but a recent post showcased some of the latest updates with Gmail Labs. I clicked the link and found that Gmail Labs has a whole bunch of cool add-ons and customization settings for your Gmail. Pretty neat; I was able to change the way my Gmail looked pretty easily.

Click the pic below and see if you can spot any differences (yes, I’m using Google Chrome here and there, but prefer Firefox above all).

Want to mess around? All you gots to do is  Read the rest

I attended the janazah of the late Imam W. Deen Mohammed, rahimuhullah. There were THOUSANDS of people at our masjid, Islamic Foundation in Villa Park, IL. Literally thousands. Cars parked all over a 1-mile radius and, again, thousands there for the janazah prayer. I ask that Allah accepts our prayer for him and that the brother is forgiven any and all mistakes he made in his life.

Before the janazah, we had to make multiple jama’at for Dhuhr due to the sheer size of the influx of people coming from 11am until 2:15pm when the prayer actually began. Due to the number of the attendees, the janazah later took place outside of the masjid on the nearby soccer field, loud speakers attached and all. Abdul Hameed Dogar, Islamic Foundation’s director, lead the janazah prayer.

There’s lots of coverage on the janazah and death of the late Imam as it is, so I won’t say much about it. However as a typical suburban middle class Desi Muslim kid who hasn’t really seen much of the world, I feel the need to say a few things. Read the rest

After a long hiatus, Khana Korner is BACK! To make things fun, here’s something my wife made a few weeks ago. I know this edition is coming out during Ramadan, so if you can’t handle this during fasting, well, come back in a few weeks. But if you go ahead, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

During our trip to the Smoky Mountains, we had something called grilled cream cheese pound cake. It was quite delish. What they did was take a piece of very premium cream cheese based pound cake, literally grilled it, and voila, instant amazingness. There’s something about grilling up a piece of pound cake that truly transforms the soft and fluffy cake into a more packed and moist one with a nice crunchy caramelized shell. That something made me want her to make it herself.

So she did. All it took was some simple ingredients and a little improvising. She didn’t exactly have quick access to cream cheese based pound cake or a grill at the time, so check out what she did.

First some pound cake. Read the rest

I work with Wasat Studios, who from time to time records Islamic lectues and other interesting little videos. At the 2008 45th Annual ISNA Convention, we filmed a tiny short Ramadan Shoutout for AlMaghrib Institute. The video was supposed to be a short reminder sent out to all the students of AlMaghrib to give them a little bit of encouragement for the month of Ramadan.

How it all happened

At ISNA this past year, three AlMaghrib instructors were there invited to speak: Yasir Qadhi, Yaser Birjas, and the latest addition to their line up, Imam Suhaib Webb. With all three of these guys there, we decided, “hey, why not get them together and film a lil’ somethin somethin. Nothing long or formal, but like an informal little fun video.”

So we asked the two Yasirs after Maghrib salah on Saturday if they’d be down to shoot something after midnight when Imam Suhaib finishses a late night MYNA session, and they said they’ll see how things go. In all honesty, I personally didn’t think it was going to happen. They looked really tired, and trying to get Imam Suhaib to do something after his own midnight session, things were looking grim.

Read the rest